Consulting — Reliability & Asset Management
Stop Managing Failures. Start Preventing Them.
Reliability-centered consulting for manufacturing and industrial operations — structured failure analysis, evidence-grounded RCM strategy, and maintenance systems designed to eliminate repeat downtime.
ASQ CRE
ISO 55000
IATF 16949
60+ global sites led as Director of Maintenance and Reliability · RCM, FMEA, and criticality analysis across heavy industrial, automotive, chemical, and process environments
The Reality
Unplanned Downtime Is a Symptom. The Cause Is Always Upstream.
Most asset failures are not surprises. They are the predictable result of maintenance strategies that react to symptoms, investigation processes that miss the real cause, and organizational patterns that repeat the same mistakes.
The COST OF REAL MAINTENANCE
5–10×
Higher repair cost for unplanned vs. planned maintenance on the same failure
2–4 weeks
Typical manual RCA investigation timeline for a complex failure event
40–70%
Of failures that recur within 12 months when root cause is not fully resolved
Asset Performance Excellence is not a maintenance program. It is a framework for understanding why assets fail, building strategies that address those causes, and verifying that the strategies are working. The goal is not to do more maintenance — it is to do the right maintenance, on the right assets, at the right time.
What We Deliver
Engagements Built Around Your Assets
Scoped to your specific assets, failure history, and operational context — not a generic reliability framework applied uniformly to every plant.
Failure Mode and Root Cause Analysis
Structured investigation of asset failures — chronic or acute. AI-assisted where the evidence base is complex or fragmented across multiple systems. Audit-ready report with grounded citations and corrective action log.
Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)
FMEA-based analysis of asset failure modes to define optimal maintenance strategies — predictive, preventive, or run-to-failure — matched to the consequence of each failure mode, not the convenience of the schedule.
FMEA Development
Asset-level FMEA aligned to IATF 16949, SAE J1739, and AIAG-VDA — building a structured failure mode library that feeds both the maintenance strategy and the quality control plan. Cross-functional facilitation included.
PM Optimization
Review of existing preventive maintenance programs to eliminate tasks that do not address actual failure modes and add tasks that do. Based on failure history, equipment data, and manufacturer recommendations.
Asset Criticality Assessment
Structured ranking of assets by consequence of failure — production impact, safety risk, environmental exposure, repair cost. Drives maintenance resource allocation and spare parts strategy.
Maintenance KPI and Reporting Design
Defining the right leading and lagging indicators — MTBF, MTTR, PM compliance, planned vs. unplanned ratio — and building the reporting structure that makes them actionable at the plant level.
More tools in toolkit:
ISO 55000 Asset Management
RCM
IATF 16949
SAE J1739
AIAG-VDA FMEA
TPM
OEE Improvement
Where the Platform fits
AI-accelerated investigation
Asset failure investigations are the core use case for the 9 Yards RCA AI Engine. When a failure event generates 10, 15, or 20 evidence documents — maintenance records, sensor logs, inspection reports, operator statements — synthesizing those into a structured root cause report manually takes weeks.
The platform compresses that synthesis into a single session. The consulting engagement then uses the structured output to drive the corrective action plan, the FMEA update, and the maintenance strategy revision — with an audit-ready record of the investigation behind it.
From investigation to corrective action to verification: RCA → G8D → CAPA. One platform. One audit trail. One engagement.
- 13 analytical modules run simultaneously — 5-Why, FTA, FMEA, Causal Inference, and more
- Evidence grounded — every finding cited against actual documents, not inference
- Contradiction detection — sensor data vs. operator logs resolved systematically against actual documents, not inference
- Global 8D corrective response workflow linked directly to RCA output
- CAPA effectiveness verification loop — proves the fix actually worked
- Single audit trail from failure detection to verified closuree fix actually worked
How Engagements Work
The 5-D engagement — from definition to delivery
No retainer, no open-ended statement of work. Every engagement follows the same structured arc — scoped to your specific problem, the methodology determined by what the problem actually requires. We work across quality, manufacturing, engineering, and maintenance — and we stay through implementation, not just the analysis.
D1 – DEFINE
Scope the failure pattern — asset type, criticality, failure history, and business context. The engagement type (investigation, strategy, or program design) is agreed before anything starts.
D2 – DIAGNOSE
Structured failure mode analysis and maintenance history review. AI-assisted where the evidence base is complex or fragmented — every finding grounded in actual data, not inference.
D3 – DESIGN
RCM-based reliability strategy, maintenance program, or corrective action plan — task selection matched to the consequence of each failure mode, not the convenience of the schedule.
D4 – DEPLOY
D5 – DELIVER
Corrective action log, KPI framework, and performance monitoring — a working program with documented ownership and verified effectiveness, not a binder on a shelf.
Have a problem that keeps coming back?
Describe what you’re dealing with — a recurring defect, a quality event, a process that isn’t performing, or a new product development challenge — and we’ll tell you directly whether a structured engagement can help and how.